Comments

This is too much nanny-state control. If you're going to fine a person for lighting a tobacco product in a vehicle containing children, then logically you should prohibit smoking in said children's homes. How long before legislation is introduced to control how the home of the children is maintained in terms of cleanliness... Will you require home inspections to determine how often clothes are laundered, dishes are washed, bathtubs cleaned, beds changed, pets immunized, and baths given? Perhaps adults should not be permitted to have alcoholic beverages in their homes because their children might be harmed by the exposure to drinking? Maybe the next step will be to prohibit pets, because animals might bring contaminants into the child's life? Yet we still serve McDonald's Chicken Nuggets to the kids, because we don't want to bother with cooking a healthy family meal and enforcing parental expectations to eat or go without.

One of the problems with the uptick of illnesses in the younger generations is that children are not being introduced to things that will cause their immune systems to respond. If children are not exposed to things that will allow them to become stronger, ultimately we will have a nation of people who get sick at a single sneeze. Not to totally cite the old days as being perfect, but partially... We folks who are in our 40-50's were exposed to a lot of things, and as a result we are able to fight off a lot of things. Younger folks now are unable to resist these things because the media and the nanny state said "Oh my, we should avoid certain things at all costs." This is not the way to grow and develop a healthy, robust and strong future. Our kids are sick all the time, now. Illnesses that we older folks took as matter-of-fact are now crisis moments for today's children. This is something serious to look at.

Onto other things. This article became available to me the evening of 1/14/14, via Yahoo News. It stated "State lawmakers today will take public comments on a bill that would make it illegal to smoke in a car with a child. A public hearing on House Bill 2086, co-sponsored by East Wenatchee Repubublican Brad Hawkins, is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. today in 260A of the John L. O'Brien building on the Capitol Campus" How does this notice give anyone a chance to provide public comments? According to the rules, my "public comment" has arrived much too late to be taken into consideration. I view this as very inappropriate governing, because the opportunity for comment was not adequately provided to the public.

Please consider that you are not creating legislation based on the public's input, which is actually your job... to represent the public. You are instead creating rules and laws based on your own opinions and the opinions of those closest to you, whose comments you might have invited. The citizens of Washington State were not appropriately invited to share their input or opinions prior to your legislative session.

My apologies if my long comment has posted multiple times. After I posted it, the page gave me a button to view my comment, and it didn't show up. So I posted it again. Who knows, now, if it even went through... Frustrating to me, and to you as a reader if the comment actually did post multiple times.

I'm not sure which is scarier, the fascism behind this Bill or the fact that this information is found in the Omak paper and not the Spokane Review or the Seattle Times.

I don't smoke, don't enjoy being around the smell of smoke, or smokers, would never kiss a woman who smoked, and don't like it when people smoke around their children. But those are my values and its not for me to try to force my values on others. As a free man in what was once, a couple of centuries ago, a free country, it terrifies me to see Washington State being the national leader in developing laws that restrict almost every thought and action that would and should be a personal choice. People who agree with the sentiment of this Bill will stay silent as yet another right is abridged thinking that it does not affect them. But, indeed it does. With every new restriction those in government are emboldened to force even more of their personal beliefs upon everyone else. And with each comes a wave of consequences not written into the law. With this law any bully cop could stop anyone with anything in their hand while driving because they "believed it was a cigarette" and while you are detained anyway lets wait while a background check is done and your license and insurance are verified and were you wearing your seatbelt and did you have your cell phone out. Then when you can't afford to pay the abusive ticket your driver's license is suspended because driving is not a right of free men, it is just a "privilege" so the next time you drive it is a criminal act and you are arrested and shackled and imprisoned, and on and on and this state works so hard to control everything while creating "criminals".